The 3 years and 7 months under Japanese rule was chaotic and grueling for the people of Singapore, and mentioning the war could send shivers down the spines of survivors — evoking bad memories of the ordeal.

3. Joseph Conceicao

Back in 1941, 17-year-old Mr Conceicao’s curiosity got the better of him. Together with his two cousins, he went to investigate two giant bomb craters that was near their home.

What they saw was nauseating — to say the least.

In an interview with Yahoo! News, Mr Conceicao said: “We saw limbs, people’s heads, hands, legs lying about. One of my cousins took his breath when he saw it, and he was affected by the experience… for many years after that.”

As if that wasn’t dreadful enough, one of his cousins approached a British soldier standing by the edge of the crater and touched him.

Unbeknownst to him, the soldier was actually dead, in a standing position, and promptly fell into the crater.

4. George Prior

At the tender age of 19, Mr Prior was taken by the Japanese to work on the Death Railway in 1942.

In a report written by his daughter Janet at the National Institute of Education, Mr Kwek told the story of how a Chinese boy escaped death by pretending to be dead in the trenches:

“(He) stood behind a grown man, and the bullet from the Japanese rifle, passing through the heart of the man in front of him, went harmlessly over his shoulder. The weight of the corpse falling back pushed him into the grave . The Japanese soldiers shuffling through the mud thought he was already killed, and by some error did not completely fill the grave. As a result the boy could breathe, could still see a small patch of sky. All day, he laid under the weight of the dead man. When darkness came, he crawled out of the grave, along a monsoon drain and eventually he reached the safety of a Chinese village, where he explained what had happened to him and was given food and shelter.”

6. William Gwee Thian Hock

Aged 8 at the time of invasion, Mr Gwee brushed off the air raids and didn’t think much of them. He and his brother even treated the bombings as a game.

Alas, he understood the severity of the situation when a bomb was dropped just a stone’s throw away from his house — killing a domestic worker and all the chickens in the area.

“When the bomb dropped, followed by the explosions, I was under the dining table. I could see the glass shatter, the items and crockery had fallen out of their shelves.”

He further elaborated that he “had to grow up in the worst possible way – lacking food, living in constant fear of being executed and being forced to drop out of school”.

Mr Gwee and his family managed to survive thanks to his father, who used to work under Japanese bosses and had photographs to prove it. These photographs saved their lives on a few occasions, when he showed them to Japanese soldiers.